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After so many tedious hours, the fox had gotten the rope off his wrists. His hands stung with numbness halfway up his forearms. It had already taken him a couple hours to chew the rope off the stake, and another hour before that to gather his resolve to do that. He swung his arms clumsily, trying to fling blood back into them. He wasn't sure exactly how long it had taken to get the ropes off himself-- at least six hours; maybe ten. D was never very good at keeping track of time, but he was fairly certain that it had been less than twelve hours since he'd found himself in the eighth circle of Hell.

Not even half a day, and already the steaming filth had reached all the way up his calves, past his knees, and proved eager to continue working its way up his thighs. From there, its grasp would only encroach further upward. He'd since reached a shallow spot where the perpetual flood of waste rested just a few inches above his ankles. He raised his head back up and closed his eyes tightly. The squishing and squelching of the abominable mess around his paws made him flatten his ears as he trudged slowly forward. He breathed in quick gasps, intermittently shuddering. Normally, breathing like this would dry his mouth out after a couple of minutes, but the air here was too humid, and the vapors too heavy, to let any surface remain dry. Each gasp of air coated D's tongue with the taste of shit.

Thick steam rose continuously, almost unnaturally slowly, from the surface of the vast mire of excrement, weighed down and almost visibly discolored by the impurities which carried its monstrous stench up over the walls of the second bolgia. Once it made its way a few feet up, it didn't seem to rise so much as to be forced gradually upward by the steam forming beneath it, creating a palpable pressure in the air. As it ascended the chasm, it became more smoggy haze than steam. It condensed on the walls, leaving grimy residue coating the stone surface. The congealing residue would in turn host large colonies of scummy mold as it oozed sluggishly down the towering walls, becoming slimy war paint on sweating, scowling cliff faces.

D blinked his eyes rapidly, flushing them with tears before he turned his head back and forth to make sure no one else was close by. About twenty yards to his left, a doe antelope banged her fists against the outer wall of the bolgia, a cascade of soft pellets flowing from beneath her lifted tail as she shouted unintelligibly to no one. D could only determine her species by her antlers and her short tail-- both thickly coated with crap-- and could not determine what language she was screaming in- if it even was a different tongue than his own, and not just frenzied gibberish. Twelve yards or so directly ahead, another unfortunate soul- probably a rat or a mouse, judging by the shape of his smeared muzzle- was on his knees, trembling as he sifted through the sludge, probably in search of bits of undigested food.

If any more of the flatterers were within view, they were either hidden beneath the surface of the wretched bog of feces or plastered too thickly to make out through the foggy steam. Satisfied that he was as close as he would get to being alone, the fox squatted down and flicked his head to toss his hair back over his shoulder as he raised his tail. His left hand immediately reached back to grab his tail, clutching it lazily just past the tip before bringing it around in front of him. Looking down at it, he realized that he had grabbed his tail by the patch on the underside which he'd been lazily dragging across the surface of the excrement as he walked, painting it various shades of brown. He laid his tail across his thighs as he wiped his stained fingers on the fur ofhis stomach with a sigh. At last, he relaxed his anus.

A wince flashed across his face as a puff of gas escaped, followed immediately by an outpouring of shit. The feces piling rapidly behind him was much the same as that which comprised his immediate surroundings; sloppy, light-brown mousse, reeking fiercely of rotten eggs and cheap, long-since digested tacos. It burned as it came out, more from the speed at which it flowed and the pressure behind it than from its acidity.

Relieving oneself afforded little actual relief here. No matter how much the fox defecated, his colon would be refilled almost as quickly as he could empty it, relieving little but the strain of holding it in. D had learned this during his first few minutes in this evil resting place. Those souls in his company never ran out of shit to spew from their mouths, and since here there was nothing to gain from persisting in their ways, their bowels were now eternally burdened, their souls doomed to be forever full of shit.

The next thing D had learned was that even if he didn't need to eat to produce endless waste, he still felt the need to eat. He'd chuckled to himself after the hunger pangs had first struck into his gut, once he realized the poetry of this development: the only way for the bullshitters to stave off the pain of hunger would be to eat their words.

Remembering this now, he still chuckled. He'd resolved to hold out for a while, and his stomach had relented in its cries for food some time ago. He grabbed the middle of his tail in his right hand as he pushed harder, letting out a loud sputter of gas between mushy turds. "Don't care. Still feels good," he murmured. He squeezed another tear from pinched eyelids and looked down at his tail. Its underside was gradually becoming more and more matted. Its base was inevitably fouled the first time he'd lowered it to cover his crack, and its tip had been towed behind, hanging into the mire. Its top side, however, was still mostly pristine and fluffy. Hesitating for a moment, D pulled the top side of his tail up to his face and nuzzled his cheek against it, smiling. He rubbed the fur against his muzzle, tickling the pink scar tissue above his nose. "Still feels good."

He pulled it away from his face and noticed a smirch that hadn't been there just a moment ago. "How'd--" His right hand hovered toward his forehead and felt a squishy dollop between his ears. "...the fuck that get there...?" He sighed, leaning his cheek against the clean surface of his tail.

"I was hoping you'd stay clean a little longer," he muttered to his hair. His hair didn't answer. All that mattered much to him now was that he could still enjoy his tail for a little while. Sooner than later, he figured, this place would claim that too. Even if he could keep it out of the muck, the sticky vapors would eventually leave their ugly residue in his fur. Before long, there wouldn't be a single spot of orange or white left anywhere on his body. One way or another, his fur would be conquered, never to be clean again for the rest of eternity, or however that was supposed to go. At last, the flow from under his tail slowed, and he smacked his lips and spat. He sighed again, shaking. His mouth and throat felt pasty from inhaling the thick fumes, as if he had been swallowing a mouthful of rancid peanut butter over the course of the last fifteen minutes. His mouth needed a break.

Spitting again, he placed his tail back in his lap, closed his mouth, and took a moment to steel himself before inhaling deeply through his nose. The fox's lip curled upward, baring his fangs and crinkling his muzzle into a snarl as his sensitive nose drank in the nauseating fumes. The stench barreled through his nose and into his airways, clinging to olfactory receptors, the lining of his windpipe, the mucus in his lungs. He coughed wetly and brought up a mouthful of feces-flavored phlegm. His mouth wouldn't be getting that break after all. Forgetting to fight his usual instinct for coughing up lung juice, he swallowed. He didn't mind. It wasn't the first time.

Clearing his throat again, D stepped forward slowly in his crouching position, careful not to waddle over a sudden dropoff. He glanced around again. The rodent he had spotted a moment ago had moved further away, and the antelope doe by the wall had assumed the fetal position as she wailed. D laid his head down on the clean section of tail in his lap and closed his eyes as the output of his bowels gradually slowed.

He inhaled again, letting the oppressive miasma violate his nostrils once more. Holding back a gag as he drew in the foul air, he realized that he'd only seen two or three stakes like the one he'd been tied to when he was brought down here. None had a soul tied to them. Whoever had been condemned to these stakes had since gotten through their ropes as D had, and were now free to roam the reeking quagmire as they pleased.

D wondered for a moment if the temporary inconvenience of being tied to a stake was reserved for the most egregious brown-nosers. He shook his head. "Nah. I was just learning." With this in mind, his thoughts turned back to the previous few days. "Christ, that was too fuckin' easy." Another laugh rose up in his throat. Remembering his shit-stained fingertips, he rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands. Pressing against his eyelids, he yawned. Phosphenes bounced against his retina. Through the swirling shapes and the darkness behind them, he could still see the face of Beldonna Crow. He grinned and coughed up another laugh as he rose from his squatting position, still rubbing his eyes. "Stupid bitch.

~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~

From where he was standing, he could smell roasted vegetables and seafood. Clams? Trout, maybe? The door was almost closed by this point, and the couple who had exited the building moments ago were barely within earshot. D snapped himself out of his haze in time to lunge forward and hold the door open with two fingers. The polished wood vibrated softly with the thumping of a bass from further in. He slipped inside quickly, having held the door open wide enough to enter the building and catch one of the pockets of his duster on the latchbolt. As soon as he was over the threshold, he could detect booze in the air along with whatever was cooking.

Perfect. Maybe I won't have to get lost looking for the closest gas station every other night. He almost started thinking out loud. His head swiveled left and right, scanning the barroom. The only other people he could see were two patrons seated at a corner table, a tall silver fox in a talking to a brown-furred rabbit girl with blue hair, and a yellow-furred rabbit behind the counter who looked up and smiled as D walked toward her.

After a couple of minutes and a few laughs exchanged as he explained that his first name was, in fact, exactly one letter in length, the door opened again. D emerged, several few hundred dollars lighter, having purchased lodging for the next three weeks. Returning to his car, he opened the passenger door and leaned inside. He swung a duffle bag over his right shoulder and an old rucksack over his left, musing to himself under his breath as he shut the door to make his way back to the front of the inn from the side parking lot. "I should've prob'ly brought a couple of more moss jugs." Still, he figured, only having two jugs of moss would be infinitely better than breathing city air straight-up for most of a month. Just being in a town larger than Allister or Port Roseaxe made him feel dirty. Even in his hometown of Jekyll, he'd sometimes catch a whiff of something rancid, probably rotting in a dumpster behind one of the cafes or taverns, wafting toward the main roads through the alleyways.

His mind returned to the task of settling into his room as he swung the door open and headed toward the staircase in the far corner of the lobby. As he ascended the steps, he fished his room key from his front pocket. A moment later, he'd crested the stairs, and found himself glancing at the numbers on the doors as he ambled down the second floor hallway. There were only four- two on each side of the hall- and at the far end was the door bearing the number 203, matching the numbers engraved on his key. With the door opened, the new tenant of room 203 entered to inspect what would be his home until June.

To the right was a small kitchen with a dark-blue tiled floor. Two wooden chairs stood on either side of a small table with a white tablecloth, and against the wall a couple steps away was a mini fridge. A small bar counter separated the kitchen from the bedroom. A small flatscreen TV rested on the counter, angled toward the bed and the couch next to it, and just past the counter was the open door to the bathroom.

D plopped his duffle bag on the couch and pulled out a glass wine jug filled halfway with soil topped with gravel, supporting a blanket of Irish moss. Once he'd spent a few moments admiring the tiny green landscape dotted with white blossoms, he licked his lips and spoke to it. "You go on the nightstand."

With the first jug in place, he ambled back to the couch to grab its companion, which he promptly set on the kitchen table. The soil in this terrarium was adorned mainly with sparse crabgrass, but its centerpiece was a glistening fir clubmoss shrub. D stuffed his nose into the mouth of the jug, filling his lungs with the aromas of pine and petrichor. Finally, he fetched a small plastic spray bottle and a twelve-inch pair of tweezers from the duffle bag and put them on top of the mini fridge, pointed toward the table.

With a loud flomp, D tossed himself onto the bed and fetched his phone from the chest pocket of his coat. Hitting the power button, he was met with one notification: a text message icon. The timestamp placed it at 6:41, when he was setting up the jugs. D tapped the icon and opened the message. The name at the top of the screen read Roch; short for Rochel Stearne. The message itself was brief: You there yet? D quickly tapped out a shorter reply: unpacking.

He laid the phone on the pillow next to his head and swung his legs over the edge of the bed to stand. He tossed his rucksack onto the couch next to the bag, opened it, and retrieved a 3DS XL and a heavily dog-eared copy of Finnegans Wake. Just as he gave them pride of place next to the moss jug on the nightstand, his phone began blaring "Light Up the Night." He didn't even need to look at the screen to know what that meant. He picked it up and held it to his ear with a flick of his finger across the screen. "'Sup?"

"Yo. Address?" Rochel's voice was as gruff as usual.

D had to pause for a moment. "806 Harriett, I think. I know it's Harriet, just the numbers--"

Rochel immediately cut him off. "You're fuckin'-- You're on the opposite fuckin' side of town, dude. I told you, you coulda rode with me. We coulda roomed." She waited a few seconds to let D respond, but received silence. "I coulda cooked your fuckin' breakfast and shit."

D finally formulated a reply. "I'm 'onna need to keep an empty stomach if I'm 'onna be around town with Crow. Plus, we got the bitch surrounded this way. She's staying at Star Tower. Right the fuck in the middle of town. Right around all the high-end restaurants."

"Of course." A faint clattering sound issued from the phone's speaker before she continued. "Bitch stays in a fuckin' casino. Well, uh, when you get back from the wine-and-dines, let me know how those restaurants measure up to my food-preparing ass. See if I can match 'em." Again, a moment of silence. "So, um... What kind of evidence you think you're gonna get off her by going on dinner dates with her and her underlings?"

Another pause. D sighed. "I don't know yet, but if she's actually willing to let me into the Wireless Assembly or whatever, then she'll probably be comfortable enough with me to let a few things slip, at least. Criminals like her are too dumb to not get caught. You prob'ly know that better than I do at this point."

On the other end of the line, Rochel audibly took a drink of something. "'Wireless Assembly'..." she mumbled, and took another draught. "Fuckin' stupid name." There was a soft tap as she put down her beverage, and she spoke up. "So you're sure they don't know you're friend-- gwurrrp. S'cuse me. They don't know you were friends with Brendon?"

"I don't see what reason he'd have to tell them about me. Last time I really hung out with him was junior high." D flopped back onto the bed, pulling his arms out of his sleeves and rolling out of his coat.

"You're sure she killed him?" Rochel's speech was starting to become slurred. "Not, like, one of the other guys?"

"Yep. Positive. Even if I can't get the evidence to prove it, there's gotta be some other shit I can bust her on. You drunk already?" As D spoke, he stood back up and ambled to the kitchen. He picked up the tweezers from the top of the mini fridge.

Roch laughed under her breath. "You know it. I hope you brought some booze with you. You're gonna need it, hanging out with her." She took another drink, loudly slurping the last few drops from her cup. "I'll text you back tomorrow. I'm gonna get nice and shitfaced."

"Have fun." D drew his phone away from his ear and watched the red hang-up button vanish from the screen. After some seconds, the phone screen switched over to the Planetoid browser, displaying the tab that he'd been keeping open: the obituary of Brendon Kelly. He stared at the raccoon's photo for a moment before he hit the phone's power button. "No, ma'am, I don't feel like drinking tonight." Reaching into the jug with his tweezers, he plucked a couple of needles from the clubmoss and tossed them into his mouth as he headed back towards the bed. "Nope, not tonight."